Double Tap
by Toboe LoneWolf
Summary: Neimi is not her grandfather.


**Title:** Double Tap  
**Game:** FE8  
**Word Count:** 741  
**Pairings/Characters:** Neimi  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**A/N: **Uses some archery/firearm terminology, but mostly as background bonus points. This fic is an idea I've had for awhile; once I saw this challenge I promptly went "well, might as well go for it" since I never finish anything without deadlines.

* * *

**Double Tap**

_Zethla was famed across Renais as "Single-Arrow Zethla." He had amazing accuracy and could shoot any target, moving or still, with one shot. "No second arrow for Zethla" was what people would say. Renais tried to recruit him many times...  
_-

Neimi is not her grandfather.

Neimi cannot afford to be her grandfather.

She is not shooting in the village archery competition, to get the bullseye on her first try. She is not hunting for the pot, bringing down food to feed both her and Colm. Her targets are not wild animals with soft pelts that run away in fear of hunters.

Her targets are men, and she must kill them before they kill her and her own.

_She doesn't realize what she has offered to do until she sees the bandit lift up his giant axe to kill Colm._

Killing a man is not the same as hitting the strawman in target practice.

It is very different: the strawman is not trying to kill _her._

_She doesn't have time to cry as she leaves behind a dead man studded with seven arrows, because Colm has already moved ahead and she won't let him go a second time._

Neimi learns quickly that a single arrow isn't enough to kill a man.

Even if she shoots them straight in the heart, a man can still survive a few more seconds before falling over dead.

A few seconds, to retaliate. To continue their swing. To cut down her friends. To kill.

Neimi cannot allow her enemy to have those few seconds.

_Afterwards, she breaks down and sobs, trying to understand why her hands are still clean._

There are only a few places that are instantly fatal to a man. If Neimi hits a small part of a man's brain, near the back of his head, the enemy will immediately collapse and die. The same is true if her arrows manage to severe the enemy's spine.

But these targets are very tiny on a moving man, and well protected by armor. (It is easier with magic users - they don't wear armor.) They don't even _exist_ for the fiends and zombies that rise up from the ground as undead monsters. Artur tried explaining it once to Neimi, that they had to break either the magics sustaining the fiends or their physical body, but it doesn't help the fact that there isn't a way to make a skeleton instantly fall apart with her arrows. Not unless she shoots in such a way, at the right angle, that the bones _shatter. _

Even then, arrows don't always penetrate deep enough to punch through bone and muscle; not unless she's much closer or uses a prohibitive draw weight, and by then it's too late.

Unlike Prince Innes, who stays far back with his longbow, Neimi does not have the time to make the shots that guarantee instant death.

She must stop her enemy _now_.

_Everything has become terrifyingly instinctive. _

As Neimi finds out, the solution is deadly simple: an arrow to the heart, and then an arrow to the head.

The first will immobilize her enemy. The second, in quick succession, ensures that her enemy no longer is a problem.

It hadn't taken long for Neimi to readjust her shooting form to her need. She's been practicing archery ever since she could walk. When she thinks about it, it really isn't that different from before; not unlike the speed shooting competitions in Lark or hunting bear. Not that different, she tells herself.

Neimi carries broadheads and bodkins, instead of the simple field points she used to carry. Her arrows must now punch through chainmail and plate armor, and pierce deep. Optimally, she would like her target to be a non-issue at the first arrow, but the battlefield isn't forgiving so the second arrow is her guarantee: target neutralized.

_Aim, draw, release. Let the release follow through as her hand continues back to draw another arrow. Bow hand returns back on the same arc as she nocks and draws again; release._

Neimi's eyes are clear and focused on the battlefield. She will cry later, if at all these days. But that isn't the time here; the only time she is concerned with now is the milliseconds it takes to fire two arrows into her target.

Because it could mean the difference between rescue, and _too late._

Because Neimi is not her grandfather.

Because she can't afford to be him.


End file.
